The Role of the German and Hungarian Authorities in the Deportations to Strasshof
The Role of the German and Hungarian Authorities in the Deportations to Strasshof

Summary/Abstract: Following the German occupation of Hungary, the government of Döme Sztójay, appointed by Regent Miklós Horthy on 22 March 1944, enacted a series of anti-Jewish decrees ranging from discrimination to plunder, to segregation, and eventually to deportation. Nearly 440 thousand Hungarian citizens classified as Jews were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps. Cooperation between the Hungarian and German authorities was basically harmonious, but on some occasions not without conflict. Horthy gave a free hand to the government. The Prime-Minister, most of his ministers, and the state secretaries responsible for the “Jewish question” regularly consulted the competent German authorities. At local level, the heads of the Gendarmerie districts, prefects, deputy prefects, and mayors consulted German advisers at meetings and banquets. The main question of my research: For what reasons were the deportation trains from some of the collection camps in southern and south-eastern Hungary not destined for Auschwitz-Birkenau, as originally planned, but for Strasshof, which offered a better chance of survival? Other questions I will try to answer are: Why was the route changed only in those areas? At what level and who decided on the route? What did the heads of the provincial administration and public security services know, or were they aware of the decision-making process? Did they have any say in who was put on each train? Was there uniformity in the implementation, e.g., in Pécs, Barcs, Bácsalmás, Szeged, or Szabadka? To answer these questions, I will draw partly on contemporary documents (e.g., the reports of Gendarmerie lieutenant-Colonel László Ferenczy, the reports he received), partly on post-WWII memoirs (e.g., Rezső Kasztner’s report), and partly on the People’s Court documents of Gendarmerie officers, Police officers, mayors, etc. (e.g., Gendarmerie Colonel László Hajnácskőy, Gendarmerie Captain Imre Finta, deputy mayor Béla Tóth).

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